After receiving permission to engage, Dungar immediately gathered his soldiers in the central camp, informing them of the upcoming march.
However, the only response he received was a uniform but unenthusiastic "Yes, General/Officer," a somewhat perfunctory reply.
Most of the peasant soldiers assigned to his company, due to his heretical and foreign background, tacitly slacked off when it came to their new commander.
While they obediently carried out Dungar's military orders due to discipline, their efficiency was only average.
Ironically, for Dungar, who had long been immersed in Western European armies, it was enough that his soldiers simply carried out orders.
After all, during the Anglo-French War, he had personally witnessed several defeats caused by the lax discipline of both sides' soldiers.
According to Dungar's plan, they would set out at dawn.
Before that, he ordered the soldiers to prepare for battle.
However, most of the peasant soldiers secretly scoffed at their commander's orders.
"You think our Anglo commander can really fight?" a burly Greek peasant soldier, bare-chested and holding his belly, asked his companion with a chuckle.
"Definitely not. It would be a ghost and a blasphemy if such a young, heretical pretty boy had any fighting ability." His companion, a lean peasant soldier, laughed as he wiped his helmet and responded.
These peasant soldiers had already planned that as soon as Dungar's command failed, they would leave the battlefield under the premise of self-preservation, leaving the brunt of military punishment to this young commander from Western Europe.
"Hahahahaha!" Seeing that his old friend was still so humorous, the burly peasant soldier also burst into laughter.
However, these soldiers did not know that although this was Dungar's first time fighting in the Near East, it was not his first time participating in a war.
As early as his youth, he had fought for England against his kinsmen on the land of France.
Although he had suffered many setbacks in recent days, his tactical skills had not been neglected.
Moreover, Dungar was not unaware of the private opinions of these orthodox peasant soldiers.
But this only strengthened his determination to fight a brilliant battle and prove his capabilities.
At just past 5:15 AM the next day, Dungar and the 250 soldiers under his command approached Alexander's encampment under the cover of the mountains.
Since this was Alexander's first time leading troops into battle, he meticulously followed ancient military texts, appropriately and evenly deploying his taxi soldiers to familiar mountainous terrain, using ambushes to cover the main army.
His main camp was specifically stationed on a mountain path in Machka, directly blocking the enemy's advance while appearing as bait, intending to encircle and annihilate the enemy after drawing them in.
Unfortunately, reality would not be as smooth as he envisioned.
During preparations for battle last night, Dungar had carefully analyzed the intelligence provided by the scouts, combining it with the terrain map.
After careful deliberation, he roughly deduced that the enemy likely had ambushes in reserve.
Therefore, Dungar decided to turn the tables, directly leading the majority of his soldiers to storm the enemy's central camp, while the remaining soldiers, equipped with firearms, stayed behind to engage in a confrontation between ambushes.
To make full use of his still somewhat unruly peasant soldiers, he specifically chose the time when the enemy was likely to be most relaxed.
Dungar's guess was very accurate; at 5 AM, most of Alexander's scouts were in the process of changing shifts, and their vigilance against the outside world was at its lowest.
Thus, it wasn't until a vanguard of 50 peasant soldiers came within 15 pule rong of their central camp that the defending archers on the wooden and stone watchtowers belatedly reacted, hastily grabbing their bows and continuously firing arrows at the enemy.
This is where the embarrassing situation arose: due to the limited conditions in Trabzon, the quality of locally made bows and arrows was not very good.
As a result, most of the arrows hastily fired by the archers missed their targets, and the few that hit were mostly blocked by the Bosporus peasant soldiers, who wore light armor and small shields on their arms.
Only a few overconfident and clumsy individuals were hit, but fortunately, they were wearing sturdy cotton clothing, and the cast iron arrowheads that struck them were of insufficient purity, so they only sustained varying degrees of scrapes.
However, this negligible counterattack by the defenders immediately alerted Dungar, who was commanding the central army.
To prevent the enemy from rushing over and causing his own numerically superior peasant soldiers to retreat due to their insubordination, he made a decisive move, personally leading the central army of over a hundred men to reinforce and seize the opportunity to crush the enemy.
At this moment, Alexander, resting in the central camp, finally woke up as if from a dream and immediately ordered the ambushes hidden in the mountainous terrain to rush over to ambush and provide support.
Even with the situation developing to this point, Alexander was still very confident of his side's victory: although his 300 infantry might not be able to defeat the enemy, the 400 soldiers who would soon arrive were all Turkmen provided by his cousin.
In his impression, these Turkmen soldiers were not something the orthodox soldiers of Bosporus could deal with.
If it were on a plain or plateau, and these Turkmen soldiers were also riding warhorses, Dungar's side might have collapsed temporarily due to misjudging the situation, leading to a great defeat.
However, the two sides were now fighting in the mountains.
When the peasant soldiers were still in Tauris, in order to cope with potential future situations, Manuel had them regularly taken by officers to train in the Crimean Mountains, where they mastered mountain warfare.
On Alexander's side, he was in a hurry to reach Machka at the time, and to make these unaccustomed Turkmen adapt to mountain marching, he directly ordered them to abandon their horses and fight on foot, which prevented them from utilizing their mobility.
This resulted in these Turkmen, who came from a nomadic background, being largely unable to quickly adapt to mountain warfare, especially since they now had no horses beneath them.
As a result, their efficiency in rushing to ambush and provide support was unexpectedly slow for Alexander's side.
And those who rushed over in a hurry were routed by the Bosporus peasant soldiers, who wore sturdy light armor, due to insufficient stamina and inferior military equipment, which further exacerbated Alexander's disadvantageous situation.
"Stop sending them! Stop sending them! Shoot arrows! Aren't you Turkmen supposed to be best at shooting non-stop?!" Alexander, protected by his personal guards, trembled with anger, frantically ordering the Turkmen to stay away from the center of the battlefield and shoot arrows from the periphery.
However, the battlefield situation was chaotic, and his orders were not fully carried out.
Only dozens of Turkmen soldiers received vague military orders, steadily remaining on the periphery to draw bows and shoot arrows, covering their own side.
In this situation, the nearly chaotic defenders could only barely maintain a stalemate with the enemy by virtue of their superior numbers, awaiting the restoration of their formation.
But Dungar would not give them such an opportunity.
Having no intention of getting bogged down, he immediately ordered the remaining nearly hundred peasant soldiers from the rear to also enter the battlefield in an orderly fashion, aiming for a swift victory and forcing the enemy to retreat.
As Dungar's 250 peasant soldiers fully entered the battlefield, the Bosporus Army, superior in morale, equipment, and organization to the enemy, quickly routed Alexander's forces within the next hour, leaving them wailing.
Alexander himself ultimately had to lead the more than 200 soldiers he could still control, taking a shortcut to escape towards Akçaabat, and trying his best to gather the scattered soldiers along the way.
Thus, Dungar's surprise attack on Machka ended in a complete victory.